


And Then There Were Five

by laallomri



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, look I'm not letting go of the time travel theory okay, not unless the next two episodes categorically confirm it isn't a thing, spoilers through episode 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8319571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laallomri/pseuds/laallomri
Summary: A diva, a dead woman, a drunk, and a dandy. Oh, and a time traveller.





	

It had been a long night.

Or at last, she _thought_ it had been a long night. In reality she wasn’t quite sure; Poe really needed to get that clock fixed.

She ought to have stayed at home. She could have been lounging on the sofa, working her way through her unsuspecting father’s best wine and tipsily stitching a better trim onto the dress she planned to wear to the costume ball next week, but no, instead she was here, in this drafty, dusty house, with no one for company but a drunk, a dandy, a dead woman, and a dull personality.

Oh, and Poe. Two dull personalities, then.

And now it appeared that Dull Personality #1 had something to do with the murders, and Charlotte had to—ugh— _run_ (truly Eliot had been right, it was a terrible night—running was for escaping one’s bigamous fiancé, not pursuing a killer of people she didn’t even like).

Conveniently, the route Charlotte chose passed by the kitchen, and as she did so she heard the front door slam twice. She assumed someone else had followed Annabel outside and comforted herself with this thought as she settled at the kitchen table with her unsuspecting host’s best wine.

Only no, she couldn’t, because it was now a proven fact that the wine was poisoned. Or was it? After all, the constables hadn’t died straightaway. Didn’t that mean the wine in the bottle was still safe to drink?

Charlotte decided her need for alcohol trumped her need to be alive, and poured herself a glass.

.^.

What was the time again?

Time was a crucial part of the world of fashion. Time determined whether it was red lipstick that was in, or brown; time determined whether that cheap fabric your stingy mother bought would last through a night of dancing; time determined whether curling your hair made you look like a dewy-eyed ingénue or a dumb little girl.

Time also didn’t matter a whole lot when you were dead, which was why Lenore didn’t really get the point of ghosts being able to walk through walls and (once they’d passed the written test) teleport with just a blink. Ghosts had literally forever to do what they wanted. Why did they need to go anywhere quickly?

Tonight, however, she learned two very good uses for such speed: reaching one’s friend in time to make a lame attempt at a joke as he died, and catching up to his suspected murderess.

Not that Lenore believed Annabel had done it. Not really. Not on purpose, anyway. She’d never approved of Eddie—his conversation made her lame joke in the attic look like a piece of scintillating wit—and she was sure that whatever Annabel had done, she had done it blindly.

Lenore frowned at yet another broken clock (honestly, what was even the point if Grim Reaper wasn’t going to keep them functioning?) and swiftly stepped through the wall leading outside.

.^.

Ernest was fuming.

The old man and the boat. The boat. The _boat_.

Even the revelation that the woman he had loved for years (okay, for three hours, but whatever) might be a killer couldn’t drive that line out of Ernest’s head.

Boat. _Boat_. As if Poe didn’t spend all his time writing stupid nursery rhymes about stupid crows.

He smirked. He’d had to save that one. Edgar Allan Poe’s famous narrative poem “The Crow.” Excellent.

Ernest took a swig of his drink and, full of the self-assurance of one who writes epic short novels about ships, continued his pursuit of the woman he had once loved so much as to contemplate getting her drunk in Spain.

Though honestly, the murdering part just made her even more appealing. Nothing like a little mystery in a woman to keep her interesting, right?

.^.

Oscar still wasn’t sure what the ghost had meant. Was she really intending to cut off Annabel’s head? Could she even do that? Did her ghost powers extend to Henry VIII-style punishments? Or did she mean she’d just take an axe to the girl instead? After all, contrary to her statement when they’d first arrived, she _was_ capable of holding things.

She could, of course, have just meant she’d ensure Annabel couldn’t escape through the back of the house, but when faced with multiple meanings, Oscar always preferred the most dramatic.

Therefore, with his head full of the grisly eye-catching image of Lenore chopping off Annabel’s pretty little head with some sort of conjured-up weapon of ectoplasm, Oscar walked just a bit faster. He didn’t quite want to _stop_ Lenore, he wanted to make sure he was there when she did it. You know, for inspirational reasons. Nothing like seeing a ghost chop off a woman’s head like a fishmonger at a market to get the creative juices flowing.

Oh, another food metaphor! How delightful.

.^.

Of course he’d half expected it, but it was still alarming to see one’s own corpse lying curled around a couple of dead constables.

HG looked at the pile of dead bodies, shuddered, and turned to check the clock. He frowned and checked his own pocket watch, then shook his head.

“Too late, as I suspected.” He put his watch back in his pocket. “I’ll have to do it myself. Er—” He glanced at his corpse. “Well, I’ll have to do it myself again.”

He returned to the attic, where the time machine stood hidden behind a stack of childish drawings of ravens. A folded sheet of paper lay on top; he tucked this into his other pocket, then stood before the machine for a minute, wondering what point he should return to.

He could, naturally, return to the moment before his death. But did he want to? He wondered if he could somehow reverse everything _but_ his death. Especially if he reversed Ms Krishanti’s murder, and then allowed himself to die anyway…

No, no, that was silly. Or was it? He supposed being a ghost was no different from being a time traveler. Both were a way of living on forever. And perhaps being a ghost could be useful—he wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally getting killed in the past.

HG took a deep breath and turned the dial.


End file.
